"Is not the imperfect sybarite to be met with even in Paris itself,
that intellectual metropolis? Unfit to endure the fatigues of
pleasure, this sort of person, after a drinking bout, is very much
like those worthy bourgeois who fall foul of music after hearing a new
opera by Rossini. Does he not renounce these courses in the same frame
of mind that leads an abstemious man to forswear Ruffec pates, because
the first one, forsooth, gave him the indigestion?
"Debauch is as surely an art as poetry, and is not for craven spirits.
To penetrate its mysteries and appreciate its charms, conscientious
application is required; and as with every path of knowledge, the way
is thorny and forbidding at the outset. The great pleasures of
humanity are hedged about with formidable obstacles; not its single
enjoyments, but enjoyment as a system, a system which establishes
seldom experienced sensations and makes them habitual, which
concentrates and multiplies them for us, creating a dramatic life
within our life, and imperatively demanding a prompt and enormous
expenditure of vitality. War, Power, Art, like Debauch, are all forms
of demoralization, equally remote from the faculties of humanity,
equally profound, and all are alike difficult of access.
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